


Too Quiet

by SaltyRobotFriend



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, I'm trying to write dialouge better, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Post-Canon, i guess?, mild trauma related angst, really just two dorks talking about their feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-02
Updated: 2018-04-02
Packaged: 2019-04-17 09:30:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14185971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SaltyRobotFriend/pseuds/SaltyRobotFriend
Summary: Because being stuck in an umbrella for like 12 years has to have an effect on you, right?





	Too Quiet

**Author's Note:**

> A short but maybe overly prolific scene I wrote just to give my writing a test run. Feedback appreciated.

Litches didn't sleep, and Lup could not be asked to sit still or meditate after a decade of doing just that while trapped in an umbrella, staring at nothing but black curtains that just seemed to hide even more black curtains for an eternal distance. She was more or less sitting on the double bed they had managed to cram into Barry's tiny room. Barry was asleep beside her. At least she thought he was a sleep, since he was curled up beneath the covers, still, eyes closed. It didn't look much like sleeping though, he didn't have that completely relaxed look about him that he usually had when he slept. Regardless, Lup envied his ability to sleep, for his brain to settle down and reset itself every couple of hours. She missed that. A long time ago she resented it, like aboard the Starblaster, where she could sustain herself on caffeine and rage for days before everyone either ordered her to please go to bed, or she just crashed into bed on her own accord. All the waiting she had to do wasn't too different in terms of she had to stop doing something and take a break, but at least when you slept the hours went by fast.

She kept going to check on her developing flesh suit. She kept poking her head into it to get a good look and coming way to close to a much younger version of herself than she ever desired to, but she couldn't stop herself. At this point it wasn't even in adolescence yet, and floated souless and unresponsive. If she stared at it long enough, she could see it growing up before her eyes. And that was just weird.

She retreated back into the bedroom, going straight through the wall, and as she did Barry stirred ruefully and looked up at her.

“Lup, I can sense you moving around,” Barry groaned. She hung over him, a red swath of weightless cloth wrapped around a vague black shape, pitch black darkness where the lights of her eyes would normally be, in a way that would've been very ominous in any other circumstance.

“Sorry, hun,” she replied, drifting back to his side and more or less taking a seat—her ghostly form didn’t sink into the mattress. As she did, Barry had put his glasses back on and propped himself up against the headboard.

“One of those nights?” he asked. Neither of them were strangers to long anxiety driven restless nights, undead or otherwise. Lup shrugged, and sat in silence for a while. Barry could almost hear her ruminating on something. He had recognized her distress. On a good day in litch form she was still recognizable as Lup, shaped like herself and radiating pride and reckless confidence. Tonight her spirit was less defined than it was supposed to be, and he recognized unfocused trepidation in her movements.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t find you sooner,” he said.

“You were trying to corral by dumb brother and his dumb friends, you were busy,” she said dismissively. Her tone would’ve reminded him of Taako had he been worse at hiding how he feels.

“If I had any idea you were in the umbera-staff I would’a done something,” he continued. “I can’t even, I would’ve snapped if I was in you’re place, just—stuck in an object for ten years.”

“It wasn’t as bad as you think.” she said in the exact tone of voice that indicated it was about as bad as he was thinking it was. “It was just, like, really really boring and quiet—admittedly kinda weird after being stuck in a ship with six people for a century, but I didn’t die—I mean get unmade or anything.” she put what passed for a face in her skeletal hands. Barry hadn’t moved, he was just sitting next to her, waiting. She would’ve really preferred if he went back to sleep and didn’t try to talk to her about it.

Even better, she would’ve liked to flop down in the nest of pillows and sleep, let her brain reset itself.

It was really dark in here, which shouldn’t have been a problem for her dark visioned eyes. But even looking around at the assortment of books and random objects Barry kept on any available horizontal surface, she kept seeing black curtains at the edge of her vision. She listened for the sounds of frogs and other creatures awake at this time. The silence in the room was starting to wear on her.

Yeah no. Sitting stuck in her own fucking weapon and talking to herself for over ten years with no way of escaping sucked.

She flicked her hand and lit up the candles on the sideboard. That at least reminded her that she was in an actual room of an actual house.

“I mean, it _was_ pretty dumb of me to build a thing that eats people’s wands and not think ‘my soul’s made of magic now, could my magical soul possibly be eaten by my own umbrella?’”

“We all failed the item artificing thing, didn’t we?” Barry replied. “It was a neat idea at the time.”

She chuckled ruefully. There was another pause.

“Not knowing was the worst part,” she said. “I couldn’t do any magic in there, the thing just kinda sucked it out of me so I couldn’t blast my way out or anything. And it was just—no one was there for forever, which _is_ what I was hoping for when I went to hide the gauntlet down there I wasn’t expecting _I’d_ be kept down there too.

Barry nodded solemnly. He wasn’t looking at her at this point but at the loose fibers in the quilt he was picking at—one of his stress habits.

He had been inches away from finding her. He was on his way to her when he had his ass handed to him by gerblins of all things. It was probably all the same, he wouldn’t have known who she was or who the umbrella had belonged to while he was alive anyway, but even when he was alive during his body hopping years he had known someone was missing. He’d wake up from dreams where he was running for someone he couldn’t see and knew nothing about. Whenever he’d lay down at night he’d catch himself moving over to leave room for this phantom person, no matter how small his bed was, feeling the vacuum where they were supposed to be. If he had gone down there and found the umbra-staff, maybe some of the missing pieces would’ve fallen into place.

“I did look for you,” he said, “all of you. I didn’t really know what I was doing half the time.”

“I know,” she said. “You did great, babe.”

He shrugged. He didn’t feel all that accomplished by what he did, neither of them did. They did fight something that was trying to eat the onmiverse and won but it was a real trial and error process. At the end of the day they were exhausted. Incredibly relieved, but equally exhausted.

He turned back to Lup, who looked marginally more stable but still clearly anxious.

“Is there something I can do?” Barry asked. Honestly curling up against his warm, pillowy form would’ve been ideal, but in her incorporeal state that wasn’t really an option.

“I mean, can we talk for a but, is that a thing you can do right now?” Lup asked. Barry was, after all, a human person who needed to sleep.

“About...” he gestured perplexedly. “Like do you wanna hear about this weird dream I just had, because otherwise I got nothing.”

“I just need to hear your voice for a while,” she said, repositioning herself so she was laying on him as much as a being untethered by the laws of gravity could. On reflex, Barry moved to run his hand through her hair, and it passed through her.

He stayed awake for as long as he could, recounting a dream wheren he and Magnus had gotten some dogs, but they were velociraptors they both kept referring to as dogs, and how on the way to the grocery store they were suddenly renovating a house that may have either been alive or haunted, it was hard to tell, he said. He was drifting off as he spoke, and ultimately lost out to sleep partway through an unintelligible sentence about bees. She watched him sink back into the pillows, and plucked his now askew glasses from his face. She could still pick things up, at least. She floated back to her side, watching the candle flames flicker.

Everything was fine now, great in fact. She was gonna be fine, everyone was gonna be ok. She was just having a hard time coming down from it all.

Barry shifted, rolled over and curled up against her and rested her head on her pillow. Right up against her own not-a-face.

“I love you so much, Lup,” said Barry, voice heavy with sleep. The two had said that to each other over a thousand times at this point, but it still made her feel warm ever time he said it. She coiled around him, repeating what she had said every night since their reunion.

“I’ll see you when you wake up,”

 


End file.
